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WENDELL PHILLIPS 

A Centennial Oration 

Delivered at Park Street Church, Boston 
November 28, 1911 



By 

Wendell Phillips Stafford 

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the 
District of Columbia 



Published hy the 

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT 

OF COLORED PEOPLE 

20 Vesey Street, New York 



W. B. CLARKE COMPANY 
26-28 Tremont Street, Boston 






WENDELL 


PHILLIPS 


Born 


November 29, 


1811 


Died 


Februa 


RY 2, 


1884 



em 



The Centenary of the Birth of Wendell Phillips was 
impressively celebrated by a public meeting at Park Street 
Church, Boston, on the evening of November 28, 1911, 
under the auspices of the National Association for the 
Advancement of Colored People. Moorfield Storey, Esq., 
President of the Association, occupied the chair and intro- 
duced the orator of the occasion. Judge Stafford, of Wash- 
ington, District of Columbia, a namesake of Mr. Phillips, 
and peculiarly qualified by inheritance, training, and sym- 
pathy to do justice to his subject. His address, delivered 
with rare eloquence and charm, made a profound impression 
on his audience, and was felt to be so noble and adequate a 
tribute to the great reformer that there has been an urgent 
request for its publication. The generosity of friends has 
made this possible, and will be gratefully appreciated by all 
to whom the opportunity of reading the oration is thus 
afforded. It has seemed fitting, in this connection, to re- 
print from the Atlantic Monthly, in which it first appeared 
more than twenty years ago, Judge Stafford's fine poem on 
Wendell Phillips, which has an equal claim to preservation 
with his masterly oration. 

To Judge Stafford himself the Association is deeply in- 
debted for his generously rendered service on this occasion, 
and for his steadfast sympathy and support in the work to 
which it is dedicated. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 

A hundred years ago tomorrow Wendell Phillips 
was born. We have assembled tonight to pay our 
tribute to his memory — one of the purest patriots, 
one of the soundest and farthest-sighted statesmen, 
probably the greatest orator, and certainly the great- 
est tribune of the people, the New World has pro- 
duced. In other cities men are doing the same. But 
we are happy above all the rest in the place of our 
meeting, the city of his birth. This house, indeed, is 
barren of association with the reform movements to 
which his life was devoted, if we except the fact that 
here in 1829 Garrison made his first important anti- 
slavery address. Here, to paraphrase his own words, 
he seized the trump and blew the first of those jarring 
blasts by which the land was shaken as a leaf is shaken 
by the wind. Its doors were closed to anti-slavery 
meetings from that hour. Yet here we do stand at 
the center of the scene where Wendell Phillips's life 
of conflict and peril was passed. Yonder on Beacon 
Street he was born. Down there on Common Street 
he died. Over there in Essex Street he lived for forty 
years. In the burial ground beside us his body lay 
interred for two years before its removal to the green 



6 WENDELL PHILLIPS 

shades of Milton. Faneuil Hall, the scene of his first 
triumph and of many later ones, is near at hand, and 
only across the street are Tremont Temple and Music 
Hall, where, just before and during the war, his great- 
est speeches were delivered, and whence the ever at- 
tentive mobs escorted him to his door and received 
his stately, "Good night, gentlemen." Yes, these are 
the very streets he loved inexpressibly, over which his 
mother held up tenderly his baby feet, and which 
he swore, if God granted him time enough, he would 
make too pure to bear the footsteps of a slave. 

Wendell Phillips was a born reformer. He could 
never have been satisfied with anything short of per- 
fection. He contended with the evils of his time, but 
if he were living in our day he would be at war 
with the evils that surround us now ; and if he should 
return to earth a thousand years hence, it would be 
the same. As long as anything better remained to 
be achieved, as long as injustice held any foothold 
on the globe, he would still be crying "forward," and 
assailing the powers of darkness with all his old-time 
eloquence and zeal. 

Added to that, he was, from deliberate and pro- 
found conviction, an agitator. He believed that in a 
free country all real progress must be brought about 
by agitation. He accepted Sir Robert Peel's defini- 
tion of the word, "the marshaling of the conscience 
of a nation to mould its laws." But his faith in the 
method went even deeper than that. Not only was it 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 7 

the sole means by which reforms could be carried 
through, it was the only means by which governments 
could be kept free. A people that is satisfied with the 
institutions it has gained, that worships the past and 
refuses to go forward to larger freedom, has already 
ceased to be free. In his own eloquent words, "If the 
Alps, piled in cold and still sublimity, be the emblem 
of despotism, the ever restless ocean is ours, only pure 
because never still." 

In the widest sense of the word he was a democrat. 
He believed in the people. "The people mean right," 
he said, "and in the end they will have the right." 
He saw that it is never for the interest of the masses 
that injustice should be done. Hence, while it is not 
safe to trust any class by itself, it is safe to trust the 
people. Not any one race, not either sex, but all races, 
both sexes, all sorts and conditions of men, good and 
bad, learned and ignorant, rich and poor. He would 
give the suffrage to all. He would put the ballot even 
in the hands of the most ignorant, and then turn to 
the state and say: "Here is one of your rulers. Xow 
see to it that he is educated, or he may give you 
trouble." He believed in universal suffrage because 
it took bonds of the rich and powerful to do their duty 
by the weak and poor. 

Himself an aristocrat by birth and breeding, he be- 
came such a tribune of the people as Rome never saw. 
If you look only at the surface of things, his career is 
full of contradictions. Here was a man of purest 



8 WENDELL PHILLIPS 

Anglo-Saxon lineage spending his life in the service 
of the dusky sons of Africa; and not only that, but 
claiming for the African race, "by virtue of its cour- 
age, its purpose, and its endurance, a place as near to 
the Saxon as any other blood in history." Here was 
a devout Christian, adhering to the creed of his fathers, 
yet spurning the nominal Christianity of his day, 
coming out from it and shaking the very dust of its 
tlireshold from his feet. Here was a man dowered 
with all the gifts of intellect, all the graces of person 
and of speech, "formed," as Emerson declared, "for 
the galleries of Europe," and able, if he would only 
stretch out his hand, to take the highest prizes of pub- 
lic life, refusing every bribe, turning his back on all 
the world had to offer, and casting in his lot with a 
handful of fanatics. Trained for the bar and pre- 
eminently fitted for success in the forum, he left the 
courthouse, locked his office door, and repudiated his 
oath to support the Constitution. Deeply interested 
in politics, and master, as few men were, of political 
questions, he never held an office, he never threw a 
ballot, he refused to swear allegiance to a govern- 
ment that required him to lend his hand to the main- 
tenance of human bondage. Devoting himself for 
thirty years to the overthrow of slavery, and living 
to see his object accomplished in the midst of a con- 
vulsion that left the anti-slavery sentiment dominant 
in the land and made the once-despised name of Abo- 
litionist a passport to public favor, he refused to ride 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 9 

into political office on the crest of the victorious wave 
— left others to celebrate the victory, while he pushed 
on, unhesitating and almost alone, to new battlefields 
for suffering humanity. It is plain we must go be- 
neath the surface if we w^ould understand a man like 
this. 

Reformer, agitator, democrat, tribune of the peo- 
ple, he was something more: he was a prophet. He 
saw with open eye the secret of the world. He saw, 
under every disguise and through all confusion, the 
clear working of the eternal will. God reigns. False- 
hood and wrong are only for a day — justice is for 
the ages. In the serene confidence of that vision he 
rebuked the mighty oppressors of his time and cheered 
the hearts of the downtrodden and the weak. "The 
spirit of the Lord was upon him, because he had 
anointed him to preach good tidings to the poor. He 
had sent him to proclaim liberty to the captive and 
the opening of the prison to them that were bound." 
We shall try in vain to understand the Abolition 
movement unless we recognize from the beginning 
that it was a religious movement. It was a revival of 
original, primitive Christianity, and the application 
of those principles to the LTnited States of America 
in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. These 
men actually believed in the fatherhood of God and 
the brotherhood of man. They really remembered 
those that were in bonds as bound with them. They 
took Christ's word for it that what thev did unto 



10 WENDELL PHILLIPS 

these, the very least of His brethren, they were doing 
unto Him. It was very simple. How should we like 
to be slaves? How should we like to have our chil- 
dren sold and torn from our arms? How should we 
like to see our daughters ravished, our fathers and 
mothers beaten till they could not feel? How should 
we like to be goods and chattels, with no rights our 
masters were bound to respect? Well, that was the 
system of human slavery that did exist in the United 
States. The Abolitionists were never too hard upon 
that system; they never gave it any harsher name 
than it deserved ; and for the very simple reason that 
it would have been impossible. They used all the 
words within their reach, but the English language 
had no words black enough to paint it or hot enough 
to damn it. Unless words had been scorpions and 
sentences had been thunderbolts, it would have been 
impossible for human speech to denounce it as it 
deserved. 

The Constitution of the United States ! We speak 
the words today with affection and with awe, and well 
we may, for it gathers up and bears in its majestic 
bosom the liberties of all ; and wherever today, under 
the Stars and Stripes, the meanest child of man is 
denied the equal protection of the law, there is an in- 
famous and treasonous violation of the Constitution. 
But I am speaking for the moment of 1835. I am 
taking you back to a time when obedience to the 
Golden Rule was treason, when the Constitution was 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 11 

not the surety of freedom but the guaranty of bond- 
age, when the snake slavery had its loathsome, slimy 
nest in the very hollow of its shield. I speak of a time 
when if you swore to support the Constitution you 
swore that you would help strike down every black 
man who had the courage to fight for a liberty that 
belonged to him as much as yours belonged to you — 
when, if you swore to it, you promised to turn the 
trembling, starving fugitive from your door, or bind 
him and send him back to unpaid labor, to torture, or 
to death. That was the Constitution the Abolition- 
ists refused to lend their hands to. Tested by the 
teachings of Jesus Christ, were they wrong or were 
they right when they refused? Did they go too far 
when they adopted the words of the Hebrew prophet 
and said, it is "a covenant with death and an agree- 
ment with hell"? Take the case of George Latimer. 
He was seized in Boston as a slave. He had escaped 
from Norfolk, Virginia, with his wife and children 
and was living here. They took him on a false charge 
of theft'. He was brought before Chief Justice Shaw, 
in the state court, was denied a jury trial, and sent 
back to Judge Story's court, the United States 
Court, where he lay under the beak and talons of the 
American eagle ; from tJiat court he was sent back to 
slavery. At the bidding of the Constitution, lawyer, 
trader, and priest had joined hands to sacrifice the 
victim. There was a vast meeting in Faneuil Hall 
on the Sunday night before he was condemned. Stand- 



12 WENDELL PHILLIPS 

ing before the furious mob that had just howled down 
one speaker, Wendell Phillips said: "We presume to 
believe the Bible outweighs the Statute Book. When 
I look upon these crowded thousands, and see them 
trample on their consciences and the rights of their 
fellowmen at the bidding of a piece of parchment, I 
say my curse be on the Constitution of these United 
States!" 

The Abolitionists had not come to that extreme 
position willingly or in a moment. They were driven 
to it by the inexorable logic of events. Garrison be- 
gan his crusade bj^ endeavoring to enlist the Church. 
He was nothing but a boy, without friends, without 
money, without prestige, without even a press to print 
his paper on. He turned to one after another of the 
natural leaders of the time, and besought them to 
champion the cause. One after another they all re- 
fused. Left alone, he said, "If no one else will assail 
this gigantic system of crime, I must do it!" And 
he did. He was thrown into jail; assassins lay in 
wait for his life ; sovereign states set a price upon his 
head; but he kept on, making his appeal to the con- 
science of the American people to wash their hands 
of the sin. Then he found he had aroused the hostil- 
ity of the very forces he had looked to for support. 
Not only would they not lead themselves, they would 
not suffer another to go forward. They turned upon 
him. Pulpit and press, traders and statesmen, col- 
lege presidents — all the recognized leadership of the 



WENDELL PHILLIPS IS 

time cast him out and strove to put him to silence. 
Xot content with this, they went on to defend the 
institution itself. The Church apologized for it; wel- 
comed slaveholders to its communion table; opened 
its pulpit to men-stealers. Merchants said, "You 
must not attack slavery, it will ruin trade!" Poli- 
ticians said, "If you breathe a word about it, you will 
break up the fnion." The press said, "Men who 
talk like that ought to be mobbed." The pulpit mur- 
mured "Amen," and confii'med its pious approval 
with a text. Bishops v^Tote books to prove that God 
had always intended the black race to be slaves; and 
many thought it doubtful whether they had any souls 
at all. 

For half a century the South had been in the 
saddle. It had furnished the political leaders of the 
nation. The Xorth, meanwhile, had turned to the 
making of money and the development of the land. 
All the Xorth asked was to be let alone, that it 
might continue to pile up its dollars. What should 
the Abolitionists have done? If they sat do\^Ti under 
the thi'eats of the slave power, the liberty to speak 
and print was lost. It was not now a question whether 
the slaves of the South should be set free — it was 
whether the free men of the Xorth should be made 
slaves. Should they file their tongues to silence upon 
the gravest moral question of the age at the bidding 
of false priests, hucksters, and demagogues? Thank 
God, they said, No ! We owe it to them that we have 



14 WENDELL PHILLIPS 

free speech today. Even Channing acknowledged 
this. They looked about them and took their bear- 
ings. Their fathers had formed this Union and bound 
it to slavery. Should they submit to it as a necessary 
evil in the hope that some day the Constitution might 
be amended and slavery removed? They were con- 
fronted by the fact that slavery was on the increase 
— that the South was determined to make it perpet- 
ual, that the North submitted, and that the powers 
dominant in Church and State forbade even a peace- 
able discussion of the question. They made up their 
minds that somebody must move. They saw that re- 
sponsibility for the Union, and consequently for slav- 
ery, rested on each and every one. They refused to 
carry that responsibility any longer. They "came 
out." They appealed to all men to come out with 
them, to form a new Union of free states, parting 
peaceably from the states that were determined to re- 
main slave. Their course was radical. Yes, it was 
an appeal to the ancient, sacred right of revolution. 
But mark this — the changes required were changes 
that could be brought about only by revolution. The 
South refusing to abolish slavery, it was impossible 
for the North to do so by amending the Constitution. 
When the change finally came, it came by way of 
revolution. Not, indeed, the peaceable revolution the 
Abolitionists proposed, but the awful revolution of 
war. The bloody sequel showed that they were right. 
They approached the question like statesmen. They 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 15 

handled it with plain, unanswerable logic. They were 
the only party at the North that did meet the ques- 
tion squarely. At the South there was another party 
that met it with equal boldness and directness, assert- 
ing that slavery was right — the party of secession. 
They were the only consistent parties in the country. 
There never was any real union between the slave 
states and the free. The only approach to it was 
when the North was utterly subservient to the South, 
that is, when the so-called free states were really slave 
states like the rest. Long before Seward had coined 
his famous phrase, "the irrepressible conflict," long 
before Lincoln had declared that "a house divided 
against itself cannot stand," yes, a quarter of a cen- 
tury before either of those utterances, the same truth 
had fallen upon deaf ears from the lips of Garrison 
and his fellows. If to discern the true nature of the 
problem and foresee in a large way the solution that 
must be found, while choosing the only means that 
can secure the object — if this is to be a statesman, 
then the right of the Abolitionist to that title is be- 
3^ond doubt or cavil. With unquestioning faith in the 
justice of his cause, with unclouded sight of the truth 
of his position, he took the country up by its four 
corners and shook it with a tempest of moral power. 
Mobs were the proof of his evangel. The land was 
stagnant with apathy, and where the wind and light- 
ning of the word came there was tumult and disturb- 
ance. Mobs were bad enough, but they were a thou- 



16 WENDELL PHILLIPS 

sand times better than the sluggish calm that pre- 
ceded them, the languor and torpor of spiritual death. 
If we deny the name of statesman to the Abolition- 
ist, to whom of his time should we grant it? Should 
it be to the smooth compromisers, like Clay, who 
spread the thin batter of mutual concession over the 
rumbling volcano of irreconcilable forces? Should it 
be to those valorous Northerners who warned the 
South that the annexation of Texas would be the dis- 
solution of the Union, and then, when Texas was 
annexed, ate their own words and made haste to take 
the hero of that infernal war for their Chief Magis- 
trate? Should it be to a man like Webster, so far 
behind his age or so deaf to the voices of humanity 
that he actually thought the consciences of men could 
be stifled, and that this mighty movement, which 
he sneeringly nicknamed "the rub-a-dub agitation," 
could be put down? Should it be to leaders like 
Birney, and Gerrit Smith for a season, who tried to 
make themselves believe that the Constitution was an 
anti-slavery document? Should it be to the men who 
formed the Republican party with the avowed pur- 
pose of stopping the extension of slavery, of abolish- 
ing it where the national government had the power, 
and of putting it, as Lincoln said, "where the public 
mind might rest in the belief that it was in the course 
of ultimate extinction," and yet, when secession was 
upon them, went down on their knees, in Congress, 
and offered to adopt a Constitutional amendment 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 17 

making it impossible ever to get rid of slavery? 
Should it be to the men in office in the days of the 
great rebellion, who finally adopted emancipation at 
the point of the bayonet, as the last and only means 
of saving the Union, by bringing to their side the 
sympathy of the civilized world and the tardy succor 
of an outraged and alienated God? Or should it not 
rather be accorded to the men who saw and declared 
in 1835 what, thirty years later, all men were obliged 
to see ? They did not need the Dred Scott decision to 
show them the plan and purpose of the slave power. 
They understood it from the first. 

I have no quarrel with you if you only mean to 
make excuses for the millions who never answered 
to their call, who could never rise to the height on 
which they stood. The saving remnant is always, in 
all ages, only a remnant — "a few leaves upon the 
topmost bough." But when you deny them the claim 
to statesmanship — when you imply that the measures 
they proposed were impracticable and vain — I ask 
you to point to the popular statesman of their time 
who proposed anything that had a feather's weight 
against the mighty tempest that swept all selfish 
calculations to the Gehenna of civil war. What did 
the Abolitionists propose? They demanded emanci- 
pation — immediate and unconditional. You came to 
it at last, not willingly, not through conversion, but 
when God had driven you to it with the lash of re- 
bellion and defeat. It was only the old excuse — Let 



18 WENDELL PHILLIPS 

us do evil that good may come. Men could not trust 
God to make the right successful. They must go into 
partnership with the devil to do the Lord's work. 
The Abolitionists, whose faith in God has never been 
surpassed, who believed in doing right and leaving it 
to Him who made it right to see that justice was 
expedient — they were the infidels and heretics of the 
time. "If I die before emancipation," said Phillips, 
"write this for my epitaph, 'Here lies Wendell Phil- 
lips, infidel to a chui'ch that defended human slavery 
— traitor to a government that was only an organized 
conspiracy against the rights of men.' " 

The movement begun by Garrison had proceeded 
for seven years before his most powerful assistant 
came to his side. Whatever may have been the imme- 
diate occasion of his coming, he owed his anti-slavery 
birth, as he always declared, to Garrison. "For my- 
self," said he, "no words can adequately tell the meas- 
ureless debt I owe him — the intellectual and moral 
life he opened to me." In the principles of the two 
men touching their life work there was never any, the 
slightest, antagonism or division. Phillips, from the 
beginning to the end, was a Garrisonian Abolitionist. 
To the service of the cause he brought his own rich 
and peculiar gifts. First of all, his character, his 
personality. Puritan of the Puritans ; son of the best 
blood of Boston; trained by Latin School, Harvard 
College, and the law teachers of Cambridge; hand- 
some, athletic, accomplished; possessed of a singular 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 19 

personal charm, the talismanic gift that moved Emer- 
son to say, "I would give a thousand shekels for that 
man's secret"; endowed with such eloquence a Greek 
would have said that on his lips the Attic bees had 
swarmed and left their sweetness; yet with a rapier- 
like thrust, skillful to disarm his antagonist or pierce 
the thickest armor, so that Mrs. Stowe said truly, 
"In invective no American or English orator has ever 
surpassed him"; an easy mastery over every sort of 
audience ; breadth of view and statesmanlike compre- 
hension of the issue ; unflinching courage, undrooping 
hope, unfaltering confidence in the triumph of the 
truth and the mighty power of God. Such was t]ie 
man who closed his office door, recanted his oath of 
allegiance, and made himself an alien in the city of 
his fathers, to join the Abolitionists. It was the only 
step he could have taken and remained true to his 
blood, his traditions, and the voice of conscience that 
had led him from the cradle. It was a happy clioice. 
It gave him the fellowship of the noblest spirits of his 
time. Do you think he ever missed the attentions of 
the class he went out from? If you imagine that he 
cast one wistful look behind him, you have yet to gain 
your first glimpse into the character of Wendell Phil- 
lips. What he said of Garrison may be said of him, 
"There were not arrows enough in the whole quiver 
of the Church and State to wound him." Think what 
it must have meant to the little band of reformers 
arrayed against a hostile nation, whom even John 



20 WENDELL PHILLIPS 

Quincy Adams could describe as "a small, shallow, 
enthusiastic party," to find in their midst the most 
eloquent man who spoke the English language, whom 
Henry Ward Beecher pronounced "the most admi- 
rable orator in the world." Said Emerson, " Strange 
as it may seem, it is true, the world owes the finest 
orator of the age to the movement that enlisted 
Wendell Phillips in the service of the poor, despised 
slave"; and in his journal he added, "Everett and 
Webster ought to go to school to him." Now let 
the South bring on her Randolphs, her Haynes, her 
Breckenridges ! They shall meet a power of speech 
as much more withering than theirs as the fire of the 
prophets is fiercer than the temper of the mob. There 
was need of such a voice. "Webster," said Phillips, 
"had taught the North the 'bated breath and crouch- 
ing of a slave. It needed that we should exhaust 
even the Saxon vocabulary of scorn, to fitly utter the 
haughty and righteous contempt that honest men had 
for men-stealers. Only in that way could we wake 
the North to self-respect, or teach the South that at 
length she had met her equal, if not her master." 

While John Brown was on trial, Phillips spoke at 
Plymouth Church, from Beecher's pulpit, on "The 
Lesson of the Hoiu*." "Virginia," said he, "is a 
pirate ship, and John Brown sails the seas the Lord 
High Admiral of the Almighty, with his commission 
to sink every pirate he meets on God's ocean of the 
nineteenth century. I mean literally and exactly what 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 21 

I say. One on God's side is a majority. Virginia is 
only another Algiers. The barbarous horde who gag 
each other, imprison women for teaching children to 
read, prohibit the Bible, sell men on the auction block, 
abolish marriage, condemn one-half their women to 
prostitution, and devote themselves to the breeding 
of human beings for sale, is only a larger and a blacker 
Algiers. John Brown has twice as much right to hang 
Governor Wise as Governor Wise has to hang him." 
Here burst on the speaker a tempest of cheers and 
hisses. The silver voice went on, "You see I am talk- 
ing of that absolute essence of things which lives in 
the sight of the Eternal and the Infinite, not as men 
judge it in the rotten morals of the nineteenth cen- 
tury among a herd of states that calls itself an empire 
because it raises cotton and sells slaves!" 

The Abolitionists were right in charging the re- 
sponsibility for slavery upon the North. "Northern 
opinion," said Phillips, "the weight of Northern 
power, is the real slaveholder of America." Edward 
Everett, on the floor of Congress, declared himself 
ready to shoulder his musket to put down the first 
slave-rising. Do you wonder that Randolph of Roa- 
noke boasted, "We do not rule the North by our 
Southern black slaves but by your Northern white 
ones " ? The task before the Abolitionists was to wake 
the North to its duty, to give it no rest or peace until 
it should witlidraw the only power that made slavery 
possible upon this continent. By 1860 the North 



22 WENDELL PHILLIPS 

had been roused, and was beginning to withdraw its 
power. The South saw the handwriting on the wall. 
"For the first time in our history," said Phillips, 
"the slave has elected a President of the United 
States." It was exactly so. The slave question, like 
Aaron's rod, had devoured all other political issues 
and held the stage alone. True to his teachings of 
twenty years, Phillips urged the acknowledgment of 
secession and the peaceable separation of the states. 
But neither to Phillips nor to any other prophet had 
it been given to divine the depth and intensity of 
Northern sentiment that clung around the flag. When 
the Stars and Stripes fell from Sumter and the mul- 
titudinous North leaped as one man to avenge it, the 
Abolitionists saw that there would be no disunion, 
that the old Union had been swept away forever, 
and that the new Union would be free. Only the 
winter before, Phillips had spoken in Music Hall at 
the peril of his life, facing many a murderous pistol 
in his Sunday congregation, and had gone down to 
his house in Essex Street followed by thousands of 
angry men. Now he spoke from the same platform, 
but, "for the first time in his anti-slavery life, he spoke 
under the Stars and Stripes, and welcomed the tread 
of Massachusetts men marshaled for war." He hailed 
that sublime rally of a great people to the defence of 
the national honor, "a noble and puissant nation rous- 
ing herself like a strong man from sleep and shaking 
her invincible locks." There had been nothing to 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 23 

match it since that night when the beacons blazed 
from Dover to Carlisle and, between sunset and sun- 
rise, all England rose to hurl back the Armada, 
"Today," said he, "the slave thanks God for a sight 
of this banner and counts it the pledge of his redemp- 
tion. Hitherto it may have meant what you thought 
or what I did; today it means sovereignty and jus- 
tice." Then his lips were touched by a live coal from 
the altar, and he burst into prophecy: "Years hence, 
when the smoke of the conflict has cleared away, the 
world will see under our banner all tongues, all creeds, 
all races one brotherhood, and on the banks of the 
Potomac the genius of Liberty robed in light, four 
and thirty stars for her diadem, broken chains under 
her feet, and an olive branch in her right hand." ^ 

It was one of the happiest coincidences in history 
that the anti-slavery cause should have culminated 
during the very years that saw Wendell Phillips in 
the full maturity of his splendid powers. When the 
rebellion began, he was fifty years of age. For more 
than twenty years he had been discussing the slave 
question in all its bearings. He had studied and pon- 
dered it in all its phases. Every weapon in his arsenal 
was bright with service and ready for instant use. 
His armor had been hardened by blows. His speech 
had acquired its perfection of form and was now to 
be charged with unexampled force. In 1861, as Mon- 
cure Conway has justly recorded, he delivered the 
greatest speeches that ever have been heard in Amer- 



24 WENDELL PHILLIPS 

ica. No man saw more clearly that the war could 
never be won and the Union established except on 
the basis of freedom. The North might indeed over- 
power her adversary, but she could never make a 
Union between freedom and slavery. This was the 
burden of the prophet during those four long years, 
years of the warrior, filled with "confused noise 
and garments rolled in blood," "with dreadful faces 
thronged and fiery arms." It was his mission to rouse 
the powerful and populous North till it cried as with 
a single voice, "Proclaim liberty throughout the land, 
unto all the inhabitants thereof." In the nature of 
things it is impossible to separate and weigh the in- 
fluence of any one man in the formation of public 
opinion, that subtle, all-pervasive force which, 

"Like the air, 
Is seldom heard but when it speaks in thunder"; 

but that there was in all that tremendous period no 
clearer or more potent voice, the Muse of History 
will yet affirm. 

When slavery had been abolished he was too deeply 
concerned with the dangers that lay ahead to join in 
the cheers of victory. He knew that the old hatred of 
the Negro would find new ways to work against him. 
He would not halt to hang up wTeaths and trophies 
or to build monuments. He girded up his loins and 
pushed on to fight for enfranchisement. He was for 
taking advantage of the sentiment for freedom and 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 25 

equality while it lasted. He struck while the iron was 
hot. He worked while it was yet day, knowing that 
the night was coming wherein no man could work. 
From 1865 to 1870, the most alert and strenuous years 
of his life, he toiled night and day for the principle 
that was finally embodied in the Fifteenth Amend- 
ment. To him more than to any other man, perhaps 
more than to all other men, its adoption was due. He 
was right. The night has succeeded to the glorious 
day that gave us the three great amendments, worthy 
to be written in letters of gold beside the Petition of 
Right and Magna Charta. The iron that was heated 
seven times hot in the furnace of battle was happily 
hammered, before it was too late, into the forms that 
cannot easily be changed. But the glow is gone. A 
new generation has come upon the scene. Selfishness, 
prejudice, the old spirit of caste, are doing their work; 
and the people that received the tables of stone, from 
the mount that burned with fire and shook with the 
thunders of Jehovah, has turned to the worship of the 
golden calf, and is taking its pleasure at the banquet. 
All this Phillips foresaw and foretold. Today not a 
state of the old Confederacy records the Negro's vote. 
The Fifteenth Amendment is sneered at by millions 
at the North as the greatest blunder of the age. 
Today law journals publish labored articles to prove 
the amendment void. And yet what is the fifteenth 
amendment? What does it declare? Merely this, 
that a man's right to vote shall not depend upon his 



26 WENDELL PHILLIPS 

color or his race. The South is as free as ever to make 
the right depend upon any reasonable test that can be 
applied to black and white alike, education, property, 
what she will. Why need she resort to miserable 
subterfuges to let in her poor, ignorant, and vicious 
whites, while she excludes even the virtuous, the 
learned, and prosperous among the blacks? Is this 
the courage, is this the sense of fairness, of the Anglo- 
Saxon race? 

The black race, in less than fifty years of freedom, 
has justified every claim of the Abolitionists. It has 
shown itself brave in battle, faithful in peace, eager 
to learn, capable of acquiring and controlling wealth, 
and able to produce noble and far-sighted leaders of 
its own blood. In spite of race prejudice and politi- 
cal betrayal, it has got its feet on the solid ground 
of material well-being and is reaching out its hands 
with slow, patient, but irresistible power to the great 
prizes of the world of effort and ideas. Its progress 
during the last half-century will be one of the mar- 
vels of history. Every man who loves justice or hu- 
manity must rejoice at such a sight. We who have 
united to demand of the American people the rights 
guaranteed by the Constitution to every child born 
under the flag, and who are resolved never to rest 
until those rights have been secured in fact as well as 
in name — we have reason to believe that the master 
spirits of the earlier crusade are with us now. As 
those who fought by Lake Regillus, in the old days 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 27 

of Rome, saw riding on their right the Great Twin 
Brethren in snow-white coats of mail, and knew that 

"The gods who live forever 

Were on Rome's side that day," 

SO in every charge we make against the forces of 
oppression we have a right to feel that Garrison and 
Phillips, the twin warriors, the great white brothers, 
are riding at our side. 

The anti-slavery cause was only one branch of 
a movement that embraces the world and reaches 
through all time. It is the triumphant progress of 
democracy — the movement of the common people 
to take possession of their own. Phillips was never 
narrow enough to have his heart bound up with one 
race only. He was too true a soldier to sit down 
content with any partial triumph. When the Anti- 
slavery Society disbanded in 1870, his last words to 
his companions were: "We sheathe no sword. We 
only turn our front upon a new foe." Looking out 
over Christendom he saw, as he said, "that out of 
some three hundred or four hundred millions, at least 
one hundred millions never had enough to eat." He 
saw the wealth of the world in the hands of compara- 
tively few, and he saw that this wealth had been cre- 
ated not by the few, but by the toil of the many. 
With brave, unflinching logic he announced his prin- 
ciple, "Labor, the creator of wealth, is entitled to all 
it creates," and avowed himself willing to follow it to 



28 WENDELL PHILLIPS 

its ultimate conclusion, to the utter abolition of the 
wage system, and the substitution, for cut-throat 
competition, of a fair and just cooperation. He had 
begun his study of the labor question as early as 1861 
or 1862, when no journal except the anti-slavery 
papers would give an inch of space to its discussion. 
But in 1871 the workingmen of Massachusetts had 
formed a party and invited him to be their candidate 
for governor. He consented, not because he wished 
or was willing to be elected, if that had been possible, 
but only to advance the agitation. To the laboring 
men he gave this characteristic advice: "Write on 
your ballot boxes, 'We never forget. If you do us 
a wrong, you may go down on your knees and say I 
am sorry I did the act, and it may avail you in heaven, 
but on this side the grave, never!'" And so far as 
workingmen have succeeded in their political aims, it 
has been because they have followed that advice. 

It would require a separate address to recount 
his services to other causes. The wrongs of Ireland 
claimed his voice; the wrongs of the Indian, the 
Chinaman, the Jew. He spoke for the temperance 
movement, woman suffrage, prison reform, the aboli- 
tion of the gallows. He taught race prejudice its 
most wholesome lesson in his lecture on the great 
San Domingo black, "the soldier, the statesman, the 
martyr," Toussaint L'Ouverture; he gave religious 
bigotry its most stinging rebuke in his Daniel O'Con- 
nell; he brought religion itself to its most vital test 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 29 

in Christianity a Battle, Not a Dream; and in 1881, 
in the most finished effort of his hfe, his great Phi 
Beta Kappa address at Harvard, he arraigned the 
timid scholarship of his time for having been a clog 
on the wheels of reform, and turned respectability 
pale by showing it that the Nihilists were only the 
Washingtons and Warrens, the Patrick Henrys and 
Sam Adamses of Russia. In the last fifteen years of 
his life he fulfilled more perfectly than any other 
American his own definition of the agitator. "The 
agitator," said he, "must stand outside of organiza- 
tions, with no bread to earn, no candidate to elect, 
no party to save, no object but the truth — to tear a 
question open and riddle it with light." 

If he were living today how he would rejoice over 
those six stars in the suffrage banner — six states that 
have risen above the bigotry of sex. How he would 
be fighting for the initiative and referendum and 
overthrowing every argument against them, argu- 
ments that have no foundation save in the old Tory 
distrust of the people. We have not begun to come 
up with Wendell Phillips, but such achievements are 
signs that we are on his trail. He was a prophet even 
in the matter of mechanics. Addressing the school 
children of Boston in 1865, he said: "We have in- 
vented the telegraph. But what of that? If I live 
forty years I expect to see a telegraph that will send 
messages without wires and both ways at the same 
time." It gives one a weird feeling to remember that 



30 WENDELL PHILLIPS 

it was almost exactly forty years from that date 
that Marconi's wonderful invention was given to the 
world. Radical, progressive, as he was, never satis- 
fied with what had been attained, he had yet the 
poet's reverence for the past. How fond he was of 

quoting those words : 

"The great of old, 
The dead but sceptered sovereigns who still rule 
Our spirits from their urns." 

His lecture on Lost Arts, prepared on the spur of 
the moment, but repeated over two thousand times, 
is as fine a tribute as was ever paid to the forgotten 
genius of antiquity. He sympathized with every 
attempt to save for future ages "the places where 
bold men spoke or brave men died." He plead in 
vain for the preservation of the Hancock House. 
He plead, not in vain, for the preservation of the 
Old South. Its dark walls stand today a proof and 
trophy of his eloquence. 

To read his speeches you would say they must have 
come flaming from the furnace. You seem to hear 
the lion roar of Mirabeau and picture to yourself the 
stormy action of Demosthenes. Yet his voice at its 
loudest was like a silver clarion, and oftener would 
remind you of a flute, while his action was at all times 
the grace of a Greek god. Higginson said: "No 
matter how humble the client he represented, he al- 
ways had the air of the grand seigneur." He really 
introduced a new style in oratory. He made the old 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 31 

bombast ridiculous. Such rantings put you in mind 
of savages who beat tom-toms and yell and screech 
to appall their enemies ; but Phillips reminded you of 
the Spartan heroes, who marched, as Milton said, 

"to the Dorian strain 
Of flutes and soft recorders," 

going forth smiling and crowned with roses to those 
deadly combats from which it was their point of honor 
never to retreat. A Southerner who listened to him 
in the old days, expecting to hear a noisy demagogue, 
could only describe him as "an infernal machine set 
to music." 

Severest of all the public speakers of his time, he 
carried in his bosom the tenderest of hearts. 

"For all the lost and desolate 
Woman and man revile, 
Saint Francis at the cloister gate 
Had not so sweet a smile." 

How close he kept to the people! Lived for forty 
years down there on Essex Street, and when the city 
tore down his house and ran the pavement over its 
ruins, moved over to Common Street, to a house 
as near like the old one as he could find. Born on 
Beacon Hill, died in Common Street — that seems 
to tell the story of the man. In the morning, when 
it was possible, he would go to the Criminal Courts 
to lend his hand to some poor outcast falsely accused 
or honestly desiring to do better. One night he was 



32 WENDELL PHILLIPS 

accosted by a woman of the street here on the Com- 
mon Mall. Looking in his pure face she saw her 
mistake and apologized. Mr. Phillips drew her on 
to talk, walked back and forth with her under the 
elms until he had her story, then took her to a home 
where she became the woman God intended her to be. 

"Douglas, Douglas, tender and true!" 

If we had a right to draw aside the curtain that hides 
his home life, what an example of chivalrous devotion 
would be brought to view! — devotion not without its 
rich reward, since from the seclusion of that sick 
chamber came the highest inspiration to heroic words 
and deeds. 

Not many men deserve to be remembered on their 
hundredth birthday; but Wendell Phillips's second 
centennial may be better observed than his first. We 
may be sure his name will be written higher a hun- 
dred years hence than it is today. When the reforms 
he advocated have become accomplished facts, when 
prisons have been turned into moral hospitals, when 
society has learned to erect "a guidepost at the be- 
ginning of the road instead of a gallows at the end 
of it," when cities have sloughed off the grogshop 
and the brothel, when woman has been summoned 
into civil life and has become the yokefellow of man, 
no longer his plaything or his drudge, when the hands 
that create the wealth of the world have learned to 
hold it and to handle it for the good of all, and every 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 33 

child born in America has an equal chance in life, 
when the dark-browed multitudes for whom he toiled 
and suffered have joined the enfranchised millions 
that are yet to trample all oppression under their 
feet — do you think that in that day the name of 
Wendell Phillips is likely to be forgotten? What- 
ever we may say, do you imagine it will be the judg- 
ment of coming times that he condemned the tyrants 
of his own age too severely? 

The word of the Lord came to Wendell Phillips, 
as to the prophets in all ages, "Cry aloud and spare 
not!" Thank God, he did not spare! Thank God 
for every bitter, biting, blasting speech that woke a 
sluggard land to its duty and made the ears of recre- 
ant statesmen tingle with shame ! Would that in this 
day another might arise like unto him, so gifted, so 
consecrated, so fearless, so mighty in the power of the 
Spirit, to rebuke the cowards and oppressors of our 
time. Wrong still walks the earth, the expectation 
of the poor perishes, and the needy are forgotten. 
Oh that he himself were here to defend the mighty 
bulwarks of liberty he labored to build up within the 
Constitution ! Oh that he were here to shame his own 
race into honest dealing with the black — to lay open 
to scorn the sneaking cowardice that makes laws to 
give white ignorance and vice the ballot and deny it 
to the black, not daring to meet its rival in the open 
field and lay down one equal test for all, but skulking 
behind "grandfather clauses," while it taxes the black 



34 WENDELL PHILLIPS 

man for parks and libraries and shuts him out from 
both! Oh that he were here to damn as it deserves 
the heUish hatred that, North as well as South, con- 
demns men unheard because they are black, tortures 
innocent and guilty at the stake, yes, even in the 
Quaker commonwealth, drags the wounded black boj'' 
from the hospital on his pallet and burns him in his 
blood — the shameless perjury that acquits the lynch- 
ers, the brazen impudence that finds unwritten law to 
clear cold-blooded murder with the sanction of the 
court! Oh that he were here to find some fitting 
name for states that, pretending to be democratic, 
hold seats in Congress for millions of men whose 
political rights they have villainouslj^ filched away, 
voting now, not as in old days for tliree-fifths of the 
Negroes, but for all ! He should be here to pour con- 
tempt upon communities that let the hands of infants 
do their work, rob the schoolhouse and the playfield 
to run the factory, and do not wince when they 

"Hear the children weeping, O my brothers, 
Ere the sorrow comes with years," — 

the sodden dullness that suffers greed and cunning to 
strike hands and tax the bread and meat, the coal and 
clothing of millions to fill the pockets of a few — the 
purblind prejudice that still holds woman back from 
her part in civic life while it leaves the grogshop and 
the brothel free to rot the heart out of great cities! 
Oh that he would come and unfrock those time-serv- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 35 

ing priests that have no word for the giant iniquities 
of their day, dumb dogs that will not bark when the 
thief is climbing into the fold! Would that he could 
wield once more the fearful lash that made bribed 
statesmen cringe and tremble and the backs of apos- 
tate judges smart under their robes! But not to re- 
buke only — would that he were with us now to cheer 
and lead! One blast upon that silver bugle would be 
worth a hundred men. The battle has moved onward ; 
there are fighters in the field. It is not an hour for 
curse or lamentation. It is an hour for the consecra- 
tion of knighthood, for vigil, and for vow. We do 
not come to praise you, Wendell Phillips; you have 
received already your eternal great reward. We 
have come to catch the glow of your great spirit 
and resolve to make our lives like yours. Here, where 
a century ago your life began, we are gathered to 
celebrate your coming with deep thanksgiving and 
with solemn joy, pledging ourselves anew to the 
grand purpose to which your life was devoted — a 
war against all oppression, for the liberty of all ! 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 

Teach me, dread boughs, 
Where from 3'our twigs the sad Muse culls her leaves, 
When she a long-neglected garland weaves, 

To bind great brows. 

Give no leaf less 
Than his unlaureled temples should have worn: 
So may his spirit pass me not in scorn, 

But turn and bless. 

I fondly dream ! 
How could my crown, though rich with crust and stain 
From tears of sacred sorrow, win such gain — 

That smile supreme? 

Short-stemmed and curt 
His wreath should be, and braided by strong hands. 
Hindered with sword-hilt, while the braider stands 

With loin upgirt. 

Too late to urge 
Thy tardy crown. Draw back, O Northern blond ! 
Let black hands take to bind the Southern frond, 

A severed scourge ! 

37 



38 WENDELL PHILLIPS 

Haughty and high, 
And deaf to all the thunders of the throng, 
He heard the lowest whisper of his wrong 

The slave could sigh. 

In some pent street, 
O prophet-slaying city of his care, 
Pour out thine eyes, loose thy repentant hair. 

And kiss his feet! 

Little it is 
That thou canst pay, yet pay this recompense: 
All tongues henceforth shall give thine ears offence 

Remembering his : 

All grace shall tease 
The flush of shame to thine averted cheek ; 
Best Greek shall mind thee of one greater Greek, 

More godlike ease — 

Blessing and blight, 
A bitter drop beneath the bee-kissed lips, 
Hyperion's anger passing to eclipse 

And arrow-flight ! 

Thou didst not spare: 
Thy foot is on his violated door; 
Therefore the mantle that his shoulders wore 

None hence shall wear. 

Above thy choice. 
This Coriolanus of the people's wars 
Could never strip his brawn and show his scars 

To beg thy voice. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 39 

Struck by death's dart 
(In all the strain of conflict unconfessed), 
He carried through the years that wounded breast, 

That poignant heart. 

Last from the fight, 
So moves the lion, with unhasting stride, 
Dragging the slant spear, broken in his side — 

And gains the height! 



^^w 




OTenkll ^fjiUipsf 
Centenari* 

181 1-1 911 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 

BoUN NoVI MlilK ','il. ISl 1 
Dill) I'lHlUAHV 'J. ISSl- 



HK stood u])()n \\\v world's broatl threshold; wide 
The dill of hattl." and of slauohter rose ; 
He saw God stand upon tlic weaker side. 
Tliat sank in seeinini;- loss before its foes: 
]\Ian\- there were who made nreat haste and sold 
T'lito the cuiiiiinii- enemy tlu'ir swords. 
He seorned their i>ifts of fame, and [)owcr. and v;o\(\. 
And, underneath their soft and tlowerv words. 
Heard the cold serpent hiss; therefoi-e he went 
And huiiihh joined him to the weaker part. 
Fanatic named, and fool, yet well conti-id 
So he could be the nearei- to (iod"s heart. 
And feel its solemn pulses sending- blood 
Throuuh all the widespread xeins of endless n(„,d. 

J. 1{. LowK 



THKKK. with one liaiul hehiiul his l)ark, 
Stands PuiLi.ii's, Inittoned in a sack. 
Our Attic orator, our Chatham : 
Old fogies, wlien he lightens at "em. 
Shrivel like leaves; to him "tis granted 
Always to say the word tliafs wanted. 
So that he seems but speaking clearer 
The tiptoe thought of every hearer ; 
Each flash his brooding heart lets fall 
Fires whafs combustible in all. 
And sends the applauses ])ursting in 
Like an exploded magazine. 
His eloquence no frothy show. 
The gutter's street-polluted How, 
No Mississippi's yellow Hood 
Whose shoalness can't l)e seen for nnid ; — 
So simply clear, serenely deep. 
So silent-strong its graceful sweep. 
None measures its unrippling force 
Who has not striven to stem its covu-se ; 
How fare their })arques who think to i)lay 
With smooth Niagai-a"s mane of si)i-ay. 
Let Austin's total shipwreck say. 



J. R. LowKi,!,. lS4.ti 




W KM)I-,I.I. I'llll.l.ll'S 



ihnt,. 



,], <ll,nllt IS'J. 



w 



KNDKLL PHILLIPS was honi in tlu- brick inaiision 
huilt In- his father. .John Phillips ((irst Mayor of Boston), 
on the h)\\er eoi-nei- of Walnut and Heaeon Streets. o\ erlookino- 
lioston ("onnnon. After his father's death (LSi^.'}) he and his 
mother resided for some years in a dwellini;- housi- on the site of 
the Atheiueuni, between Beaeon Street and I he Old Ciranary 
Hur\'inu- (xi-ound. 



"■ He was a thorough Bostonian. too. and his anti-slavery 
enthusiasm ne\er rose (|uite so hii;'h as when blended with local 
pati'iotism. No one who heard it can e\ er tor^et the thrillini;' 
modvdation of his voice when he said, at some s[)ecial crisis of 
the anti-sla\ery agitation. — 

•' • I lo\e inexpressiljly these streets of Boston. o\ er whose 
pavements my mother held up tenderly my baby feet; and if 
God j^rants nie time enough. I will make theni too pure to bear 
the footste[)s of a slave! 

T. \V. HuuuxsoK 




131KT11PLACK Ol' WKNDKI.l, I'lIllJJl'S 



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FrniH (I kiiiff-ri,/ iiurtniit „i<ul,' hi L<ui<lni, in /,- 



THEN beti,an an aii;itation which for the marvel of its origin, 
the majestv of its purpose, the earnestness, unselfishness, 
and ability of its ai^peals, the vioor of its assault, the deep, 
national convulsion it caused, the vast and beneficent changes it 
wrought, and its widespread, indirect influence on all kindred 
moral questions, is without a })arallel in history since lAither. 

A\"k\1)KLL Pnii.i.ii's, at Gai-rison's funeral, 187!' 



I claim for the anti-slavery movement that, looking back 
o\er its whole course, and considering the men connected with it 
in the mass, it has ])een marked by sound judgment, unerring- 
foresight, the most sagacious adaptation of means to ends, the 
strictest self-discii)line, the most thorough research, and an 
amount of patient and manly argument addressed to the con- 
science and intellect of the nation, such as no other cause of the 
kind, in England or this country, has ever offered. 

AVkxdkll Phili.ii's, 1858 



(Georo'e Thonijjson, the eloquent English ally <»f the American 
abolitionists, tin-ice visited the United States, in 18;U, 18.)1, and 
1864., and was hotly mobbed during his first two visits. On his tliird 
\ isit lu' witnessed tlie alxdition of sla\ery and was |)ul)]icly lioiiorrd 
tor his unselfish labours.) 



NONK kiio-A what it is to live till tlu-v mU'eiii life tVoin its 
seeininu inoiiotom In la\ iiiu' it a sai-ritirt' on tlu- altai- of 
some great cause. 

The ao-itator iiiu^t ^taiid out-ide of oro-ani/atioii. with no 
bread to rarn. no candidate to elect, no i)ai-tv to sa\e. no ohject 
but the truth. to tear a (lUe-tion open and riddle it with iiuht. 

Power. abilit\. iiiHueuce. charactei-. \ii-tue. are oidy trusts 
with which to serxe our time. 

The bi-oadest and most far-sin-hted intellect is utterl\ unable 
to foresee tlie ultimate c()n-^e(|Uences of any i;i-eat social change. 
Ask yourself, on all such occasions, if there be any element of 
i-inht aiid wronu' in the (juestion. any |)i-incii>h' of clear, natural 
justice that turns the scale. If so. take your pai't with the per- 
fect and abstract ri-ht. and trust (iod to see that it shall pi-o\e 
the ex[)e(lient. 

Wkndki.i, riiii.i.ii's 




WENDELL PHILLIPS 
ph)jt<*finiph bt/ J. ir. Black. <ifH>nt i.> 



r I "^( ) Ik- as oood as our fatliers we must be better. 

^^'e must never allow the siren voice of our tastes to drown 
the cry of another's necessities. 

It is safe to leave man with all the riu,hts (4od gave him. 

Lal)or, the creator of wealth, is entitled to all it creates. 
Before the movement stops, evei'v c-hild ])orn in America nuist 
have an equal chance in life. 

While woman is admitted to the gallows, the jail, and the 
tax list, we ha\e no right to debai- hei- tVom the ballot l)ox. 

Genius can mould no marl)le so speaking as the spot where 
a brave man stood or the scene where he labored. 

A\'kxdeli, PuiM.ll'S 




WKNDELL PHILLIPS 
From a photograph by Sarony. altmt la 



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